ISLAMABAD: Pakistan said on Friday it had identified the suicide bomber responsible for an attack on a mosque on the outskirts of the capital that killed at least 31 people, with the government saying the incident was carried out by militants sponsored by India and supported by Afghanistan.
The explosion took place during Friday prayers in the Tarlai area, a densely populated suburb of the capital, with hundreds of worshippers inside the mosque. Islamabad’s district administration said 169 people were also injured, several of them critically.
The attack comes amid a renewed surge in militant violence in Pakistan and follows a suicide bombing outside a district court complex in Islamabad in November last year that killed at least 12 people and wounded dozens, underscoring growing security concerns even in heavily guarded urban centers.
Talal Chaudhry, Pakistan’s minister of state for interior, told reporters at the blast site, an imambargah, or a place of worship for the Shi’ite Muslim community, that the attacker had been identified as a suicide bomber following forensic analysis.
“We have now received information about the terrorist who carried out the suicide bombing here,” Chaudhry said. “He is not an Afghan national, but details of how many times he traveled to Afghanistan have been obtained.”
